Russ wrote:
>I'd be happier with it if 3 of the first 6 ingredients were not grain.
 
Yes.
 
Figured that perhaps a timely warning is due.  I heard recently from a
veterinary dietician who attended a trade show that several general pet
companies are trying to get on the ferret band-wagon but that their foods
just don't make sense for ferret health needs.  He did not specify types
but said that he is very worried about things getting worse for many
ferrets due to this, so watch out.  He's someone who knows his stuff and
that means the ferret folks need to recall the phrase "Buyer beware!"
 
As far as I know the only food that has been very thoroughly researched
is Totally Ferret, though some others certainly seem to work well and may
have been researched but not had that publicized.
 
Here are some tips: the primary ingredients need to be flesh food based.
Ferrets are specialized as obligate carnivores.  Grains, soy, and other
plant foods serve as nothing more than fillers or flavoring, with possible
rare exceptions such as one form of tannin in cranberries and blueberries
possibly helping when bacteria are present in the bladder (but not
otherwise) as they do with people.  There is no real evidence that
probiotics work in them.  There have been people like us who have
experienced what appear to possibly have been improvements once they were
given, but who had no way to know if the changes would have happened if
they weren't.  According to the veterinary dietician they don't digest in
a fashion for which those would be useful, so I guess that they can have
their guava yogurt as a treat but I shouldn't expect it to help them any.
They digest differently than we do, so what suits us is not always right
for them.  Dog food, of course, is BAD for them, but everyone here knows
that.  There is a FALSE rumor going around that chicken meal being better
than chicken byproduct meal.  (Of course, MOST rumors are false practically
by definition.) You can learn what these terms mean by searching food info
in the FML archives http://listserv.cuny.edu/archives/ferret-search.html,
or the FHL files: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list .
 
The big point is to watch out this year for foods from general pet places
because some really bads ones are coming out from places that just want to
make a quick buck without doing their homework first and the ferrets will
be the ones who suffer!
 
Oh, and as many will attest and have already said here: when you give a
quality food the consumption goes down, so the actual expense is nowhere
near as much higher as it may seem up-front, plus litter pan duty gets a
bit easier.  Skip the cheap foods and never give a dog food (except as a
piece now and then for a treat).  Dog food lacks essential nutrients such
as taurine for ferrets.
[Posted in FML issue 3438]